CENTRAL EDUCATIONAL CENTER OPENS AUGUST 10, 2000: A NEW CHALLENGE BEGINS

As we plan for the opening of the Central Educational Center Aug. 10, many people have commented that the journey is over.

On the contrary, the greatest challenges are still before us as we work to make the CEC a place where a different kind of teaching and learning take place.

The basic premise of the CEC is that we need to better prepare our high school graduates to enter the work force. Business and industry are telling us that they need employees with specific job skills beyond the traditional high school diploma, as well as a foundation in a positive work ethic.

The Coweta County School System and Carroll Technical Institute, in a unique partnership, plan to train students in four specific career paths and to address the work ethic need.

Already, the CEC administration and faculty have undergone intensive training in teaching and learning methods that have been proven in highly sensitive areas such as nuclear plants, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, and other highly specialized arenas in which superior technical training is critical. The focus at the Central Educational Center will be on performance and achievement rather than theory and other abstracts of learning.

CEC teachers are already planning ways to involve students in projects that use an integrated approach to curriculum rather than the more traditional approach of teaching subject matter in isolation.

Business and industry will continue to play an important role in this process as local experts help design, deliver and evaluate the courses at CEC.

Local business people also serve on the CEC Board of Directors, along with parents of students who will attend the school. CEC students will benefit from unique job shadowing and apprenticeship situations in which they will learn from an expert actually on the job in the student's chosen field.

For students who take multiple courses at CEC, core curriculum courses such as English and math will be available on site. We are also in the process of completing articulation agreements with other post-secondary institutions so that much of what students accomplish at CEC may transfer to other schools, even traditional four-year colleges.

In addition, Carroll Tech will continue its traditional presence in Coweta by maintaining its regular course offerings during the day and in the evenings. Adult education classes for GED candidates will be an important part of the CEC picture. A new component, the night high school program, will expand opportunities for high school students by offering evening and nighttime classes for students who may have other commitments during the day. All these components of CEC are part of our commitment to provide as many opportunities as possible for Coweta residents to continue valuable and essential training which can be the difference in the quality of life available to us all.

At the CEC groundbreaking ceremony June 2, Georgia Governor Roy Barnes called Central Educational Center a model. At this early point, the vision and design are models, perhaps. Truly, the real work is only starting as we endeavor to deliver on our commitment to provide state-of-the-art technical education to our students. The CEC will be a true work in progress as we continually experiment, evaluate and modify the model. We will certainly do all we can to make sure that the CEC model works, not just for us, but for the students who will attend, for the families represented by those students, and for the employers who will hire our students.

It is all part of the larger dream to continue to make Coweta County a place where families can work, play, learn and train for the ever growing number of jobs with which our area is being blessed, keeping Coweta County a place where good schools are a great investment.

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